A Wilson Center fellow with the Global Europe Program from September 2012 to May 2013, Dr. Charles King now serves as Professor of International Affairs and Government at Georgetown University. Author or editor of seven books including Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul (W.W. Norton, 2014), Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams (W.W.

When black Brazilian filmmaker Anderson Quack and rapper Nega Gizza launched their bids to run for office in October’s elections, the absence of a murdered colleague cast a long shadow over the event in an impoverished district of Rio de Janeiro.

Rising political star Marielle Franco, a black Rio councilwoman, had been instrumental in bringing the two candidates under the banner of her Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), but did not live to see them start their campaigns.

February is Black History Month in the United States: a time to celebrate and contemplate the sacrifices and triumphs of members of the African American community in the struggle for civil rights. But the United States is not alone in celebrating its African heritage this month. On February 9, Brazilians began the annual celebration known as Carnaval.

This presentation is about an African American settlement that originated in Washington, DC right after the Civil War in 1867. Approximately 40,000 African American refugees came into the city during the Civil War. They were destitute when they arrived, and the majority of them had to settle first on the streets and later in makeshift housing built from discarded materials. The Freedmen’s Bureau decided to create a settlement on the southeast side of the city to help the newly arrived immigrants build their homes.

One very dark December morning in the early 1990s I found myself shuffling my boot-clad feet, trying to keep warm as I waited on an ice-covered rail platform 150-odd miles northeast of Moscow. As a Russian colleague and I began to conclude the train would never arrive, he quietly explained that we were standing atop hundreds of bodies. The prison trains leaving Moscow during the 1930s arrived in these very same switching yards and, as they were divided up to head to different labor camps, those who hadn’t survived were simply tossed into a pit by the tracks.

When Pakistan emerged as an independent state in 1947, it sought to provide a new homeland and safe harbor for South Asia's Muslims, the largest religious minority in the subcontinent at the time. Yet this project was not exclusive. Taking its name from Pakstan, an acronym composed of the key letters of its constituent regions-Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan-Pakistan at first welcomed all of its new citizens, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Non-Muslims comprised 23 percent of the total population, and non-Sunnis comprised a quarter of the Muslim population.

The Wilson Center, chartered by Congress as the living memorial to President Woodrow Wilson, is the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum. In tackling global issues through independent research and open dialogue, the Center informs actionable ideas for Congress, the administration, and the broader policy community.